Every year Forbes comes out with these great lists for the “World Richest People“, “World’s Richest Billionaires” and even more specific one’s like “World’s Richest Supermodels“. They always get me with their top 500 richest issue, I like to keep track of the who’s moved up and down… and why. In addition to profiling the world’s richest people, Forbe’s also reports on some other great niches, like “Top 5 Most Expensive Domains“. Below is there list of top selling domains… don’t you wish you picked these up back in the 90’s!
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1. Sex.com
$12 million
Originally registered by Gary Kremen, a Silicon Valley software salesman, in 1994. Sold in a private sale for a mixture of cash and stock to Boston-based Escom LLC in January 2005. |
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2. Porn.com
$9.5 million
MXN Limited bought its way into the porn industry in May. Brokered by Moniker.com, the deal stands as the largest all-cash URL transaction ever. |
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3. Business.com
$7.5 million
Sold to ECompanies Venture Group, headed by former Disney executive Jake Weinbaum, in 1999. Yet even the highly prized name couldn’t protect the business from the dot-com bust; the site is now a parking lot for other URLs. |
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4. Diamond.com
$7.5 million
Odimo sold this jewel of a site–along with its jewelry inventory–to Ice.com, an online retailer, in May 2006. Ice.com paid cash for the site and an extra $2 million for Odimo’s bling. |
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5. Beer.com
$7 million
Originally owned by Bill Fisher, a Web site developer who also owned Budweiser.com and Guinness.com. Sold to Belgium-based Interbrew, the world’s second-largest brewer by volume, the site now features racy content aimed at a male audience. |
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If you missed out on these domains, don’t feel bad. There are still plenty of domains being sold for thousands upon thousands of dollars. Just when I was at Affiliate Summit East, Moniker held a live domain auction and “AffiliateDirectory.com” went for an insane $30,000! It’s a good name, but I didn’t think it was that great. You’d be surprised what’s selling for what. Whether you are buying domains to flip and sell, or build them up as established web sites, there is still an ever increasing demand for quality names and you never know who just might want yours next!
"With great power comes great responsibility".... my Uncle Ben told me that. Haha, just kidding! I'm Zac Johnson and I've been making money online for over 10 years now. In short, I started making money online while I was in high school... but my passion for marketing and making money goes back way earlier than that. I created ZacJohnson.com to help motivate you to start making money online, and live the life the you always dreamed of.
So where do you find domains that are for sale and where so you sell a domain once you have it?
greatdomains.com, sedo.com and moniker.com to name a few.
would be great to see google.com for sales…hahaha
Hey Zac, amazing site, how many hours a day, or week, you work (blogging, research, posting) ?
Can someone buy a domain and months, or years later sell it for profits, even the domain was only reserved ?
It would have been nice to get in on some of these domains early on; like 10 years ago!
Business.com just sold for 360 MILLION!!!!!
I bet the guy that sold it for 7.5 million feels like an idiot now.
Heh, makes me want to kick myself in the head for being dumb in 95 and not buying a ton of stuff. Oh well.
I was just reading about business.com; that is crazy to say the least!
I read somewhere that business.com just recently sold for 350 million. I forgot where, but it said that the DOW Jones and NYT were in a bidding war with another guy. The third guy ended up winning the bid against two big players. Could you confirm this?
-Gregg
yes, some telephone directory type company bought it.
Do you think it’s a viable money-making scheme, buying and selling domains?
Here’s an interesting idea and unlike others out there, this one can really happen so get on board. This can go sooner than most.
http://www.mostexpensivedomainsold.com/